Axiom-man: Tenth Anniversary Special Edition (Superhero Novel)

By A.P. Fuchs

One night, Gabriel Garrison was visited by a nameless messenger who bestowed upon him great power, a power intended for good. Once discovering what this power was and what it enabled him to do, Gabriel became Axiom-man, a symbol of hope in a city that had none.

One night, after a routine patrol, a mysterious black cloud appears over the city. Flying over to investigate it, Axiom-man is stopped short when the cloud’s presence shakes him to the core. An electrifying fear emanates from the cloud, and he can barely get near it. Quickly, the cloud takes flight and leads him on a wild goose chase throughout the city, only to flee from him in the end. Almost immediately after the cloud’s appearance, a new hero arises, Redsaw, clad in a black cape and cowl. The people, now enamored with this new super-powered marvel, seem to have forgotten about Axiom-man and all he’s done for them.

Except something’s wrong. That same fear that emanated from the cloud drips off Redsaw like a foul smell and Axiom-man can barely get close to him without feeling ill.

What is Redsaw’s agenda and who is he? And why is it every time Axiom-man gets close to him, it feels as if his powers are being sucked away?

As if that wasn’t enough, Gabriel’s day job hasn’t gotten any easier. His co-worker and the woman he adores, Valerie Vaughan, has little interest in him, and his boss has made it clear that one more day late to work will be the day he cleans out his desk. Then there’s the new trainee, Gene Nemek. What is his fascination with Redsaw, and why is he never around when Redsaw appears?

From flying over city streets and soaring at dizzying heights, to balancing a secret identity with destiny, Axiom-man must discover what Redsaw’s presence means and how it ties into the messenger’s life-altering visit before the city—and the world—are enamored with an evil that has haunted the cosmos since the dawn of time.

This newly-revised special edition includes an introduction by the author, a bonus short story that takes place right after the novel, and the essay, “The Axiom-man Origin and Why I Write Superhero Fiction.”

About the Author

A.P. Fuchs is the author of many novels and short stories. His most recent efforts of putting pen to paper are The Canister X Transmission: Year Two, Axiom-man Episode No. 3: Rumblings, The Dance of Mervo and Father Clown, and Mech Apocalypse.

Also a cartoonist, he is known for his superhero series, The Axiom-man Saga, both in novel and comic book format.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Coscom Entertainment
• Release date: Oct 19, 2016
• ISBN: 9781927339657

A.P. Fuchs

A.P. Fuchs is a working writer and illustrator, and the author of more than forty books. He is most widely known for his superhero epic, The Axiom-man Saga, and his shoot 'em up zombie trilogy, Undead World. He's been an independent publisher since 2004 and has played every role in the publishing business, including-but not limited to-editor, book interior and cover designer, publisher, and marketer. His spectrum of work includes fiction, non-fiction, poetry, comics, essays, and articles. He also writes a weekly newsletter called The Canister X Transmission, which you can subscribe to here.He can be found on most social networks sharing information. Join his Patreon journey for serial novels, essays, behind-the-scenes stuff, and more at www.patreon.com/apfuchs His YouTube channel is YouTube.com/@apfuchsWriter and illustrator A.P. Fuchs makes his home in Winnipeg, Manitoba, smack dab in the middle of North America.

Book preview

* * * *

by

A.P. Fuchs

Published by Coscom Entertainment at Smashwords.com

This book is also available as a paperback at your favorite online retailer or through your local bookstore.

* * * *

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and events either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons living or dead or any known superheroes is purely coincidental.

ISBN 978-1-927339-65-7

Axiom-man: Tenth Anniversary Special Edition

Axiom-man is trademark ™ and Copyright © 2016 by Adam P. Fuchs. All other related characters are Copyright © 2016 by Adam P. Fuchs. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce in whole or in part in any form or medium.

Axiom-man original edition Copyright © 2006 by

Adam P. Fuchs

Published by Coscom Entertainment

Check out Axiom-man on the web at

www.canisterx.com

Text set in Garamond; eBook Edition

Cover art by Jeremy Scott

Original Edition Edited by Ryan C. Thomas

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This edition is dedicated to my two little heroes, Gabriel and Lewis.

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Walking the Path

Though I normally don’t write to theme because I let things like that manifest on their own, one thing that was deliberately done with The Axiom-man Saga was to show the journey of a superhero. It was—and is—really important to me to reveal the natural progression of a superhero’s life instead of the kind of condensed version we get in movies nowadays.

I gave Axiom-man a slower start to his path to heroism.

On purpose.

By all means, there’s action galore in Axiom-man and lots of superheroics, but it was the kind of superheroics that were specifically written not to formula. I wanted to show him doing everyday superhero stuff and not just going up against superpowered bad guys in tights.

I needed to root Axiom-man in the real world.

Our world.

The premise of the whole saga is based on the question: if Axiom-man—his mythology and all—showed up on Planet Earth tomorrow, how would it most likely play out?

That question gave me a lot of room to plan ahead. I could have launched Axiom-man into an intense superpowered journey right from the get-go, or I could have let him do lesser superheroics all the time with no superpowered villains at all, or I could have done a bit of both. It was this third choice that I ran with because, given Axiom-man’s mythology, superpowered villains were inevitable. But would the villain always show up right after the hero does as is often the case in movies? I didn’t think so, so instead let some time pass until things really started to go down and Axiom-man’s world grew a lot more complicated.

We are all on a journey in our lives and, generally speaking, our personal journey is a lot like Axiom-man’s: intense and trying periods intermixed with lesser crises, while also enjoying periods of peace and everything going our way.

We’re all walking the path of life, starting from when we’re born straight through until the day we die. We all are creating our own saga with a new page written each day we get out of bed (even on the days we don’t).

The essay at the end of this special edition of Axiom-man speaks on why I write superhero fiction so I won’t talk about that here, but Axiom-man has been a big part of my own journey as a human being and it was only a matter of time before I would sit down and share his story. In fact, his life and mine interconnect and overlap now and then because a writer always writes what he knows and Axiom-man is me is so many ways.

The final thing that was important when crafting Axiom-man was to connect with the reader. This was something that couldn’t have been done consciously, or something that could have been forced, but it was something that was kept in mind. I needed this story to have heart, to have a soul. It not only needed to feel real in terms of what happened in the tale, but it needed to feel real in that subconscious way, that way that connected your life and your journey with Axiom-man’s life and his journey. He needed to be relatable. He needed to do what you do, feel what you feel, think what you think.

He needed to be human despite the fantastic powers.

He couldn’t be untouchable.

That path . . .

Not sure where you are on yours as I draft this introduction up by a lake, but I do know that whatever your path looks like—good or bad—it’s still one worth walking.

Gabriel Garrison was on his life’s path, nothing special, pretty ordinary. Then he encountered the messenger and everything changed and his path took a turn.

If you keep on yours, spectacular turns are inevitable.

Just keep walking.

Walk the path.

Walk life.

The story you are about to read marks ten years into Axiom-man’s journey. Not in story time, but in our time. Ten years ago this book was first released. The special edition is a revised version of the book that was published in 2006. I didn’t rewrite it, but worked over some of the text to read more smoothly. Also included is a short story that takes place right after this book does and was written for this edition. Concluding this book is that essay I mentioned, The Axiom-man Origin and Why I Write Superhero Fiction.

The Axiom-man Saga is a giant story with a beginning, middle, and an end. Fifty books are scheduled: twenty-five novels, and twenty-five episode novellas. So far, eight books are released, not including this one. It will take the greater part of my writing life to complete the story, and that was the point: a life’s work about a superhero while I walked my own path through this world.

Thank you for joining me on Axiom-man’s journey and my own.

- A.P. Fuchs

Southeast Manitoba, August 20, 2016

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Prologue

He loved this part—the falling. The city street rushed up to meet him, the freedom of having nothing but air surround his body. The wind whistled by his ears on either side of his mask. Thirty stories from ground level, Axiom-man let gravity take him, pull him, draw him forever downward toward the earth. The lights from the streetlamps below quickly illuminated the dark buildings in front of him and the building face beneath him as he plummeted headfirst toward the traffic below. The honking of horns, the revving of engines as the streetlights turned from red to green, the hollering of people at street corners embraced him. With a quick turn upward, he swept past the street not ten feet below, sharply banking his body to the left so he could follow the flow of traffic.

Flying just above the cars always brought stares and pointing fingers.

Look, there he is! someone shouted as he zipped past.

He didn’t fly low to show off; it was more about remaining visible whenever he could, a reminder to those who looked up to him he wasn’t far off and that, if they needed him, he’d be there to help.

The end of his long cape flapped against his heels, a sensation he never grew tired of. His only wish was he could fly faster, see the world at a blur—lights behind window displays streaking past, people mere shadows as he flew by—but either way, he loved it.

A pocket of air swirled beneath him as he rose upward, the buildings no longer looming over him on either side; they quickly dropped beneath him.

Night was his favorite. At night, there was freedom.

He moved to fly low again and soon was back level with the buses and trucks; the cars were slightly beneath him. Ahead, a Transit bus pulled away from the bus stop then quickly slammed on its brakes, the two red lights in the back shining bright. At first Axiom-man didn’t think anything of it. Perhaps the bus driver forgot to double check his clearance into traffic, perhaps he was too hot and wanted to remove the jacket of his uniform before continuing on his route. But when Axiom-man flew by, he caught a glimpse through the driver’s side window of a disheveled man still standing before the change receptacle, the bus driver facing him. Not fifteen feet past the bus, Axiom-man heard the muted screams from within. He whipped around, a few folks on the street yipping and hollering as the wind from his sudden turn caught them off guard. Just as he floated over to the doors of the bus, he heard the man tell the driver to drive.

The bus tore off into traffic.

Axiom-man followed. He pressed on the speed as best he could, hoping against hope the bus driver wouldn’t end up flooring it. He knew he could only keep up for so long until the bus would be traveling faster than he could. Reaching forward, his fingertips touched the back of the bus, searching for a handhold. The bus had to be doing at least sixty kliks by now. Any more and he’d have to fall back.

If only he’d been given the gift of speed.

His gloved fingers grabbed on tight to where the rear window met the white metal frame surrounding it. If he hadn’t been simultaneously flying while he hung on, he would have crushed the frame and lost his grip and tumbled to the ground.

The bus picked up speed, the cars in front peeling out of the way as the big behemoth of a vehicle started barreling through. The bus ran a red light. Cars crossing perpendicularly screeched to a halt, narrowly missing it. One car caught the tail end of the bus, sending the bus fishtailing.

Please regain control, Axiom-man thought.

The driver seemed to have heard his wish because a moment later, the bus’s path was straight again. Its horn blaring, it forced its way through the traffic. The speeding bus was met by other car horns and people shouting, most swearing. Axiom-man centered himself, focused, then gripped the rear right side of the bus and pulled himself along the side paneling, doing his best to remain below the view of the windows. He didn’t want anyone inside catching sight of him and tipping off the man at the front who seemed to be the cause of this. Left arm stretched high, his forearm and shoulder muscles aching, he used his right hand to brace himself against the side of the bus, his fingers gripping the small ridges along the side paneling. He pulled himself forward.

Almost there. The front door was about eight feet away. People shouted from the sidewalk, horns honked. Someone inside the bus screamed. Up ahead was a bank of parked cars. He saw the shadow of someone inside one of them. If they opened the door . . . . They did. The door raced toward him. Instinct taking over, left hand still clutching a beam dividing a set of windows between thumb and fingers, he let go with his right hand and floated up just before the door would have slammed him in the face. The top of the car door grazed his chest and belly, ripping along the thick and tough material of the chest piece of his uniform. He didn’t care if it had torn or not.

Banging on the glass. Someone inside had seen him. He tried to bring a forefinger to his nose to signal them to be quiet, but before he could, he saw the man at the front swiftly moved for the driver. Axiom-man lowered himself so he was alongside the bus again and flew forward as fast as he could, all the while guiding himself along the bus. A loud bang sounded from within and the bus swerved to the left. He nearly lost his grip again as his body was lurched to the side. He squeezed the metal framing that ran beneath the windows hard, the metal crinkling between his fingers. He grumbled. He had wanted to do this with as little damage as possible. Pushing himself, he flew faster. When he finally reached the front doors, he saw the crumpled and bloody body of the bus driver through the door’s windows. The bus swerved to the right as the man inside got control of the wheel. The bus picked up speed. The traffic up ahead didn’t seem to know what was happening and not a single car moved.

Axiom-man reached forward and curled his fingers around the flat front of the bus. Scrunching the metal, securing himself, he punched through the glass of one of the front doors with his left hand, took hold of the beam dividing the doors, and tore the door off and sent it slamming to the concrete below. He caught the bus driver’s body as it tumbled toward his feet, lifted the corpse, and placed it inside as fast as he could. The moment he set foot on the first step, he found a gun pointed at his face.

A jolt shot through him. He was not bulletproof. The only protection he had was the tough, light blue material that ran at an angle across his chest and across his mask. The rest of his outfit was thick, navy blue tights. Quickly, he scooped the bridge between the thumb and index finger of his hand under the man’s wrist, sending the man’s forearm flying upward, the gun pointing toward the ceiling. The gun went off. Everyone on the bus screamed. Out of the corner of his eye, Axiom-man caught the elderly lady sitting in the handicap spot cover her ears. The bus swerved to the left and ran up the median then rocked as it came back down off the curb on the other side.

They headed toward oncoming traffic.

The man jostled in the driver’s seat and forcefully tried to lower the gun back down. Quickly, Axiom-man pushed up, his strength easily outmatching his attacker’s. The gun went off again, punching another hole in the bus’s roof. Axiom-man lunged for the enemy driver. The driver pulled on the wheel, spinning the bus one hundred-eighty degrees. Tires screeched from behind as cars avoided the vehicle. Sirens blared up in the distance and before long the interior of the bus was filled with flashing reds and blues.

The driver stomped on the gas. The bus lurched forward. The flickering red and blue lights of the police sirens faded toward the back of the bus then were gone altogether before reappearing when the police cars behind them caught up again.

Stop the bus! Axiom-man shouted.

The driver didn’t reply.

Axiom-man squeezed the driver’s wrist. A bone popped beneath his thumb. The driver cried out and dropped the gun. Axiom-man pulled on the driver’s arm, violently tugging the man toward him. With a quick right hook, Axiom-man’s fist connected with the man’s face. The guy released a low grunt as his head was knocked nearly clean off his shoulders. The side of the driver’s skull crashed into the corner of the divider separating the driver seat from the rest of the bus. The man crumpled to the floor, landing on top of the corpse. The bus veered to the right when the man’s hand left the wheel, and crashed into a parked car. The deafening dull bang of metal slamming into metal rang in Axiom-man’s ears. When he glanced up, the passengers all leaned forward in their seats from the impact, their heads on their knees. Some had fallen into the aisle. Others had fallen on top of each other. Sirens sounded loud and clear, and red and blue danced along the bus’s interior walls and ceiling.

Getting to the controls, Axiom-man set the bus in park, and turned and raised a friendly hand to the passengers who looked at him. He went down the steps and squeezed through what was left of the door and set foot on the pavement. Just as the cops, guns ready, cautiously approached the vehicle, Axiom-man gave them a salute with two fingers then took off into the night sky.

What a way to end a Sunday night.

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Chapter One

Gabriel Garrison stepped off the elevator at the seventh floor of Dolla-card, a credit card company near the heart of downtown. He swiped his pass card at the set of double doors that led onto the main calling floor and quickly scanned for Valerie Vaughan. She wasn’t in yet. Even after having worked here for the past fourteen months, he still found himself excited to see her every day. How he longed for a chance to ask her out. He had almost mustered up the courage four months ago, but after having acquired his powers, he had to enforce a change in priorities. He only hoped in the meantime she wouldn’t find someone else. So far, she hadn’t, but that could change any moment.

He ran his fingers through his brown hair, the bangs falling back over his forehead. Straightening his glasses, he reminded himself he was at work now and had to act accordingly.

The original plan, as Axiom-man, had been to operate in secret, to be a kind of shadow figure who would come out of nowhere, help, and move so swiftly no one would notice he wore a costume. But after his first night out saving a woman from two muggers, he quickly learned remaining unseen and leading a double life would be a lot harder than he first thought. The moment the woman caught a glimpse of him, he knew it wouldn’t be long before he, in full costume, graced the front page of the Free Press. And, sure enough, the next day he was an artist’s rendering of who the woman described she saw. And after rescuing a construction worker who had fallen off one of the beams many stories up while working on the new Manitoba Hydro building, the media was already there when he flew him down to street level, the cameras flashing and the video tapes rolling.

Though Gabriel had been comfortable with his disguise and felt the dark and light blue costume and mask, which concealed his head save for his hair, was enough, he got to thinking he would have to take the disguise even further and hide even himself when he was . . . himself.

When he first started working at Dolla-card, he adhered to their dress code of mandatory button-down shirts and dress pants. But when he made the decision to really try and distract any possible thoughts people might have that, for whatever reason, he was really Axiom-man, he took the dress code a step further. He added a cardigan to his ensemble and bought a pair of costume glasses.

The main change he had to undergo was the change in his demeanor and the way he presented himself. His coworkers at Dolla-card knew him as an all-around cool guy—confident, friendly, fun. Slow but sure he had to work a more gentle mannerism into his presentation, soften his voice and, at times, accidentally spill his tea in the lunchroom or accidentally brush his papers off his desk. Though he knew it made him look clumsy, it was all he could think of to help keep his life as Axiom-man a secret.

Gabriel took his seat in his cubicle and turned the computer on. While his machine booted up, he removed his fall jacket and draped it across the back of his chair. The sudden coolness of being with one less layer of clothing was comforting. Even after nearly half a year, he was still getting used to wearing his costume beneath his clothes. He feared because of the bulkiness of the front part of his uniform—the tough light blue material that ran diagonally across his chest and stomach—he would come across as too big or imposing than just your average guy. But he found if he held his posture just right and let his arms hang at his sides a certain way, the costume wasn’t noticeable beneath his clothes.